


Silver Snow on a Red Cloak

by Felle, Felle_DesignWorks (Felle)



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-04
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2020-10-06 19:02:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20511938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Felle/pseuds/Felle, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Felle/pseuds/Felle_DesignWorks
Summary: The promise of a reunion seems so long ago, buried under the weight of time and betrayal, but it draws her back all the same like a hummingbird to a crimson flower.(Spoilers for Black Eagles/Silver Snow route.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jtav](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jtav/gifts).

Garreg Mach looked terrible. There was no way around it. Much like the small, abandoned town that sat immediately outside its main gate, the monastery itself was blasted half to ruin. Impact craters from trebuchets littered the walls, deep rives marked the places where great beasts had scoured the stone, and nature was steadily retaking everything within reach. Byleth knew little of buildings beyond basic battlefield fortifications, but it was obvious even to her that Garreg Mach was well on its way to collapsing without prompt intervention.

The market square beyond the ruined gate was silent. Scraps of fabric tents were half-eaten by moths, and what few tent poles remained lay in broken, rotted pieces on the ground. Once she had avoided the place as a hive of too much activity, but now the stillness unnerved her. Byleth conjured a drop of flame in her hand to light the way as she ascended the broken main steps.

It was the same all over. The greenhouse, dining hall, stables, the old dormitories—neglect and plunder were evident everywhere. In some places she needed to climb over piles of fallen stones just to continue. An entire wing of the knights’ quarters was simply gone, as if a mage had blown it sky-high. The cemetery was mostly untouched, overgrown more than damaged. She knelt at her parents’ graves and slowly wiped the dirt and dust from their markers, shooing away spiders and crickets as she did.

By far the worst damage was confined to the chapel. She supposed that the Adrestians had returned at some point and sacked the place, carrying off anything of value and pulling down everything else. The hymnals had been piled on the floor and burned, the pews split by axes and knocked aside. A fallen section of the transept roof had blocked easy access to the saint statues and saved them from being torn down, but it felt like cold comfort in the face of the greater ruin.

Byleth wandered through the space, unsure of where to go or what to do. She wasn’t even sure why she was here; the place was clearly abandoned, and she couldn’t stop the decay that had taken root. In the end she sat against a pillar and pulled her knees up to her chest, snuffing her flame so the darkness and silence could enshroud her.

A pinprick of light stuck out in the moonless sky, brighter than the smattering of stars visible around the Goddess Tower. Her eyes narrowed, and her hand instinctively went to her sword. All of her old training started flooding back as she darted to the wall to hide, shuffling to the doorway to peer around the corner for a closer look. Definitely candlelight. Someone was up there.

She hid behind the well, and then the low wall that stood before a precipitous drop, each time trying to get an idea of who was in the tower. The only movement she could see was the flickering of the candle, moving half a second behind any errant puff of wind that kicked up. Byleth crept across the bridge as quickly as she dared, only to find the door ajar.

The damage inside was entirely due to neglect. Perhaps the empire’s troops had feared divine retribution for defiling such a sacred space and refused to go beyond the chapel. Still, that didn’t make it much easier to climb the stairs, crumbling and half-blocked as they were. Her sword would do her little good in such tight quarters, and she sheathed it in favor of readying the dirk sitting on the small of her back. Near the top, the damage ceased, or at least diminished enough that she didn’t need to climb over anything, and she crept toward the eastern overlook, where the light had come from.

“I suppose it was foolish to expect anyone to come here, after all this time.”

Byleth froze. That voice lanced down to her heart, curdled her blood like ice. Her grip on her dirk faltered. A thousand thoughts swirled through her head, few of them good but shining brighter for their rarity. It couldn’t be…not here, not where she had elected to start the war five years prior.

But it was. She looked less a lord taking the field and more a ruler now, but there was no mistaking Edelgard’s profile, illuminated by a single candle in the windowsill. She had exchanged the Flame Emperor’s heavy shield and axe for a single thin rapier, fixed at the hip to her belt beneath a red half-length cape blazoned with Adrestia’s two-headed eagle. Rather than obvious armor, she wore a red dress that flared out over her legs and held its circular shape in spite of gravity. Her stark white hair was no longer loose, but tied into two severe buns that lent purchase to her horned crown.

The emperor of Adrestia sighed. She hadn’t noticed her company yet, which allowed Byleth to study her. The years had been kind, filling out the lines of her face and making her cheekbones stand more prominently beneath her eyes. She seemed sad, and Byleth felt a skirmish of painfully unfamiliar, conflicting emotions in her chest. There was the instinct to comfort, operating below the realm of conscious thought, clashing against knowledge. The knowledge that she had ordered all of this—the attack on the monastery, the Holy Tomb’s desecration, her father’s murder—

That thought broke through her instincts and left anger roiling in its wake. The sorrow on Edelgard’s face was the same sorrow she’d offered as she watched Byleth carry Jeralt’s body back to the monastery. A necessary sacrifice in her scheming. Had Remire been another _necessary sacrifice_? Had the Flame Emperor worn the same sadness under that blank mask when she asked Byleth to join her after seeing that carnage?

There was enough space in here. Byleth released her hold on her dagger and grabbed the Sword of the Creator in its place. She intentionally measured her step to make her heel click on the stone and make her presence obvious.

Edelgard spun on one heel, her hand shooting across her waist to the hilt of her sword. The frantic sweep of her gaze over the chamber settled on Byleth, and for a moment her hard expression refused to abate. Her brow furrowed and she opened and closed her mouth several times, as if the words she was trying to form kept falling apart in her throat. Finally, slowly, Edelgard took her hand from her rapier, and Byleth mirrored her motion so that they were out of their battle stances. The loose locks of hair framing Edelgard’s face swayed as her head cocked. “Professor? Is that—is it really you?”

One terse nod. The emperor’s voice quavered, and the way her eyes widened cracked at Byleth’s resolve. “You haven’t changed at all, you look exactly the same as…back then,” Edelgard said. _Back then, when I cut the axe from your hand and failed to kill you_, Byleth thought. The memory of her moment’s hesitation in the monastery town, the instant when her commitment had faltered and allowed her enemy to escape and fight another day, swam sickeningly in her mind. “Where have you been all this time? Almyra? Dagda? What have you been doing for five years?”

“Being dead, mostly.”

Edelgard’s lips pursed into a frown. “Jokes? Well, it would hardly be the strangest thing that’s ever happened to you.” She took a step forward and reached for a length of Byleth’s hair.

Byleth brushed her hand away. “Where’s your shadow? Lurking in a corner somewhere?”

“Hubert is his own person, he isn’t my shadow. He didn’t accompany me here.”

“Why are you here, _Your Majesty_?” Byleth asked. Her voice remained flat as usual, even as she tried to inject some of her anger into it. “This isn’t much of a reunion.”

“It is now. You’re here, I think that’s more than would I could have asked for,” Edelgard said.

Byleth stayed silent. Beneath her cloak, she nudged her sword hilt to a better angle for drawing.

The emperor straightened up to her full height, which didn’t amount to a great difference from her regular posture. Byleth still kept her head tilted down to look at her. “We’ve hurt each other. The tomb, the battle outside Garreg Mach…we very well could have killed each other, if only things had been a hair different.”

“If only,” Byleth muttered. Edelgard’s lips crinkled into a frown. A puff of wind outside made the candle nearby flicker and throw odd shadows across her face.

“I’m choosing to believe you when you say that you’ve been dead to the world for the last five years, so allow me to explain the situation. The vast majority of Faerghus is under imperial control. The remains of the Fraldarius and Gautier forces can only keep up their holding action for so long before they’re backed up against Sreng. The nobles of Leicester are fractured, unable to stop squabbling long enough to get to the negotiating table. Houses Gloucester and Ordelia have declared for the empire, Duke Goneril’s forces are occupied with Almyran incursions, and House Daphnel can’t cross Ailell. The rest of Fódlan is a matter of time. Adrestia is going to win this war and reunite the territories the church cleaved from us.”

Edelgard stepped closer once more, into Byleth’s space. It would have been so easy to pick her hand up and touch Edelgard’s cheek, so like porcelain in its smoothness and fairness. Part of Byleth cried out to do just that. Her arms stayed at her side. The emperor’s eyes were wide in the darkness, black pressing against a ring of pale lilac, hopeful, expectant.

“Then it sounds like you don’t need me,” Byleth said.

“I do. War is grinding the whole continent down. You are the most brilliant tactician I’ve ever met. No one ever got worse than cuts and scrapes when you were leading our class, and you won us the Battle of the Eagle and Lion without a single casualty. If I had you executing our strategies for bringing the alliance and the northern kingdom into the fold, it would shorten the war by several years and save thousands of lives. And I…” Edelgard looked down. “I want you by my side. We work too well together, my teacher. I thought before my coronation, before all of this, that I might call you my friend.”

Byleth flicked a few strands of her own hair. “You know what I am. Half of the nobility in Adrestia must know by now. I’m the last person you should want for a friend,” she said, with vocal insistence. The emphasis was as much for herself as it was for Edelgard; that her first instinct was to nod along with the assessment of the war and her potential contributions chilled Byleth down to her bones. But Edelgard was good at this: convincing people that it was in their best interest to follow her, to bend their will to her own.

But a goddess could not bow to an iconoclast.

“You’re the only person I want for a friend,” Edelgard said softly.

The dissonance between wanting to comfort and being completely unable to forgive was starting to give Byleth a headache. She turned away and widened the distance between them by a few steps to at least give herself some space. Edelgard remained in her place.

“I asked you, all those years ago, if you would join me. If you would help me in tearing Crests out of our world and see that no one suffered because of them ever again. I’ll ask you the same now.” Edelgard took on a cool, authoritative expression, an emperor addressing a subject rather than a student speaking to her instructor. “Will you join me, my teacher?”

Byleth felt the cracks snaking across her resolve, jolting and panging through her chest, until it began to crumble and cold determination yielded to a blaze of anger. Her hands balled into fists so tight that they ached, that a trickle of blood ran down one nail from where it was cutting into her palm. It must have shown on her face, because Edelgard took half a step back and turned to expose less of her body.

“I will not help you grind Fódlan beneath your heel,” she said, and fixed her hand on her sword.

Edelgard sighed and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, they were cold, distant. Her hand flew to her rapier and freed the slender, elegant blade in the span of a breath.

“If you will not be Adrestia’s ally,” the emperor said, fighting a small tremble in her voice, “then you are her enemy.”

Byleth ripped the Sword of the Creator from its sheath as Edelgard charged her, swiping the rapier across her waist. It was a clumsy attack, easily parried, the technique of someone more accustomed to an axe’s brute strength than a sword’s precise elegance. She turned the strike away, wincing at the wet ripping sound the blade made against her own sword’s vaguely bonelike flat.

“You won’t—” Byleth caught the rapier between her sword’s notches and twisted it to an awkward angle before pulling back to guard— “win like that.”

“And you won’t win at all!”

Edelgard pulled up before Byleth could strike her basket hilt and seemed to remember that she was using a thrusting weapon. The tip of her blade sang forward, so sharp that it caught what little light they had, and pushed into the space Byleth had occupied only a moment before. Her training won out, though, and the momentum from her failed thrust turned into the beginning of a wide, spinning slash. Byleth locked the blade against the back of her own. “Tell me, was I a fool? Trying to sell a cause to a mercenary?” Edelgard asked as she tried to yank her rapier away. “Would silver have enticed you better?”

“With _your_ allies? Not for my weight in gold.”

She faltered at that, clenching her jaw, as if she had been able to block out the thought of it until now. Edelgard pulled her rapier away and dropped into a defensive stance.

“I am sorry about your father,” she said.

Hot, red anger crept over the edges of her vision. Whatever beginnings of a burn she felt in her muscles disappeared under a furious swell of emotion, too confusing and too foreign to make sense of. Pinpricks stung at the corners of her eyes. The thickness of her voice seemed to choke her. “You will be.”

Now it was Byleth’s turn to take the offensive, and she had no illusions about what weapon she was using. Her sword flew in a flurry of strikes, so fast and so varied that Edelgard was forced to remain on the defensive just to keep up. One slash sheared the cape from the emperor’s shoulders. Another opened a length along her left sleeve, one Byleth almost didn’t notice with the way red trickled back into place. Edelgard cried out, her breath coming in sharp, pained hisses, and Byleth felt her hand twitch around her sword hilt. How many times had she healed a similar wound on some battlefield or other? She gritted her teeth and kept attacking.

The momentary lapse had given Edelgard time to find her footing, though. She parried the next strike and followed up with a slash of her own, catching a piece of Byleth’s jacket and sliding across the armor over her stomach. They traded blow for blow, each thrust countered, each slash parried. Byleth sucked her breath through her teeth. Five years out of practice had narrowed their skill gap considerably.

Byleth swept at Edelgard’s leg before another strike could land and knocked her down. The emperor winced as her free hand shot out to break her fall. Her rapier fixed in place across her body, ready to defend, but she was in no position to block a proper crushing blow. She bared her teeth in defiance even as her eyes went wide again, as she watched Byleth raise her sword over her head. It would only take a single heavy slash. The Adrestians would have no reason to fight if she cut the eagle’s head.

One moment passed.

Then another.

Wet heat spilled down Byleth’s cheeks. Her vision stung and blurred with the disorienting unfamiliarity of tears. The sword slowly lowered, suddenly so heavy in her grip. She only needed to close her eyes and do it, and the Adrestian war machine would crumble. It was selfish, it was so damn _selfish_, for her emotions to upwell now and still her blade.

Edelgard sprang up in the moment of reprieve, bashing the pommel of her rapier against Byleth’s hand. The Sword of the Creator clattered to the floor, and Byleth was too busy reaching back to stop Edelgard from shoving her to the wall and resting the rapier’s edge against her throat. She had tears in her eyes as well, Byleth saw, and her breathing was a cascade of unsteady wracking motions. “Why?” she asked, fighting to keep her voice even. “Why? Do you think I _want_ to kill you? The responsibility is too much, so you pass it on to me?”

Byleth’s shoulders squared. “You’re still too confident.”

She looked pointedly down, and Edelgard followed her gaze to the dirk poking at a thin gap in her armor. Byleth pushed her head forward, and the rapier withdrew from her neck in concert, as she expected. “Enough,” she said, and pushed the rapier down while moving her dagger away. Edelgard let her take the rapier and toss it aside with the dirk. Byleth wiped her thumb under Edelgard’s eye and pushed away the tears there, then softly pressed their foreheads together. “Enough. I don’t want to kill you, either.”

“Maybe we should have established that before we started fighting.”

Byleth grabbed Edelgard’s shoulder for support. She was so tired—tired of fighting, tired of feeling sorrow, tired of forcing herself to go on, tired of looking at students and seeing enemies. Edelgard looked tired, too. Weary. So full of pain that it could only escape as the tears rolling down her face that left dark lines in their wake. Byleth cupped her cheeks in her hands and kissed at the spot beside Edelgard’s chin where several had massed, then followed one trail to her eye. Edelgard squirmed in her grasp, but made no effort to pull away. Byleth did the same on the other side. She brushed a few strands of white hair aside as the emperor looked up to meet her gaze. “That’s better.”

And then Edelgard kissed her.

It was clumsy, her lower lip missed Byleth’s and their teeth bumped together for an instant, but the dual spikes of surprise and excitement made it hard for her to care. Edelgard’s hands snaked under her jacket and tightened on her back, fixing her in place. After a moment Byleth remembered to breathe again. One hand cradled the back of Edelgard’s head, the other settled on her waist, and when she finally kissed back a small whimper broke through the silence.

Edelgard’s face was flushed all manner of red when they pulled back, looking as shocked as Byleth felt, before she dove back in. She fumbled with the clasp holding the remains of her cape in place and tossed it aside before pushing Byleth’s jacket from her shoulders, trying all the while to keep from taking a single step back. For several minutes the pleasant warmth in Byleth’s chest was foreign and unsettling, but it never occurred to her to snuff it out by pulling away from Edelgard, and when it pooled lower her hands began to shake.

They sank to the floor, Edelgard seated between Byleth’s legs, where she was free to go back and forth between stroking Byleth’s cheek and trying to undo the clasps on her armor. “Here,” Byleth said breathlessly, and pulled the release hidden at the nape of her neck. The two halves of her chest plate popped free, and Edelgard ripped it away as fast as she could.

One hand, its glove hastily tossed by the wayside, twisted at the knots holding her jerkin in place and did away with that as well. Finally Edelgard was face to face with the thin fabric of Byleth’s undershirt, but she paused and leaned back, hands in her lap. The crumbling, smoldering heat that had settled firmly between her legs cried out for attention. “May I…may I touch you, my teacher?” she asked.

“Only if you use my name first.”

Edelgard worried her lower lip between her teeth for a moment, then leaned forward again. “Byleth,” she whispered, then let her fingers drift down to the ridge of her collarbone. Again and again, like a prayer offered before an altar as she explored, winding her hand here and there. “Byleth, Byleth, Byleth…”

They paused as briefly as they could to pull the rest of their armor away, then fell back against one another with Edelgard’s cheek resting against Byleth’s throat. “You are so much more beautiful than I imagined,” Edelgard said as her hand crept downward. The tip of one finger brushed at the patch of hair between Byleth’s legs. Her hips twitched forward, and Byleth ran her hand down Edelgard’s stomach in turn. “I’ve never done this before, so please tell me if there’s something I can improve.”

“We’ll figure it out.”

The first dizzying press of Edelgard’s fingers against her sent Byleth reeling, struggling to catch her breath. Doing it herself simply didn’t compare. It was a challenge to keep her mind straight enough to think, but she did her best to mirror Edelgard’s motions, picking up speed when she did and then drawing back. The low moans humming through the crook of her shoulder spurred her on, quickening her pace, until the pressure spinning tight in her core snapped and burst. She kept her hand moving all the while, until Edelgard was gasping and shuddering as well atop her. The strangled cry that slipped out despite her best efforts echoed through the tower and seared into Byleth’s memory.

Edelgard was loathe to get up and retrieve her clothes, and Byleth let her stay nestled against her, lips pressed to her white hair as Byleth healed the cut on her arm. Perhaps, she thought vainly, the world would obligingly stop for them as long as they made no motion to end the night. Her hand trailed slowly up and down Edelgard’s back.

“We can’t be allies,” the emperor said.

She left a hint of a question in her tone, the slightest upward lilt, as if this was a negotiation. Byleth sighed and tried to shut off the vague image her mind strained toward: standing at Edelgard’s side, hands clasped, looking over a united Fódlan, ruler and consort or whatever they were to each other. How deceptively easy her thoughts made it seem.

“No.”

“It doesn’t seem like we can be very good enemies, either.”

Byleth looked at where their swords had fallen, blades crossed over one another. “No.”

“You don’t know what I would do, what I would give, to have you by my side,” Edelgard said. Her hand trailed over Byleth’s stomach. “If you…suppose that you took work in Almyra or Brigid, somewhere beyond Fódlan, away from the fighting, until the war ended. Mercenaries go all over, after all. And then suppose that you found yourself in Enbarr after that?”

“I’ve never been to Enbarr before.” Byleth caught Edelgard’s chin between her thumb and first finger and pitched her head up. She had gotten the hang of kissing after their crash course, as had Edelgard. The emperor tightened her grip as they broke for air. “You’ll show it to me, supposing I find myself there?”

“I would like nothing more, my teacher.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I ended up doing more of this upon request.

Edelgard awoke with a start and immediately regretted it. Her jolt sent a sting of pain through her shoulder and made her clench her teeth, making her all too aware of the flesh and bone still knitting itself back together. Carefully, or as carefully as she could manage with her other arm that wasn’t much better, she sat up and adjusted the sling keeping her right arm close to her body.

“Byleth?”

Nothing, not even an answering sleepy murmur. Edelgard reached toward the other side of the bed, but found only sheets, still slightly damp from Byleth’s presence—neither of them were used to the Dagdan climate yet. That wasn’t strange by itself, Byleth fell asleep quickly but woke at the sound of a pin dropping in another room, but Edelgard couldn’t hear her in the washroom attached to their quarters. When she rose to her unsteady feet and looked inside before using it herself, there was no sign of her.

Edelgard padded over warm stone, making the bandages on her legs flex and push against her muscles. It was a warm, humid night—_every_ night in Dagda was warm and humid—and well-lit by the full moon she saw from the windows. Edelgard yawned. Her body needed sleep, cried out for it, but sleeping by herself was a difficult proposition.

There was a single candle lit in the kitchen, and the doors to the balcony had been left open. Edelgard tensed and looked around for a knife until she caught the scent of bergamot, its container left open beside the teapot near the hearth. She shuffled over to the balcony and held the jamb for support.

Byleth was sitting outside in the dark, curled up on one of the outdoor chairs as the wind brushed her pale green hair this way and that, looking out on the port of Feradan and the sea beyond. Fódlan was out there somewhere, over that horizon. A world’s worth of troubles, just two weeks away by ship. The idea made the world feel large and small all at once.

“Here you are.”

Her…whatever Byleth was to her turned, illuminated by another candle on the table in front of her. For all their lightness, Byleth’s eyes seemed so deep, a chasm Edelgard could fall into if she wasn’t careful. She set her tea down and stood. “You ought to be in bed,” Byleth chided.

“I could say the same. May I join you?”

Byleth helped her into the adjacent seat, where Edelgard had a perfect view of the harbor, always bustling, lights twinkling to guide ships even in the dead of night. The imperial jewels had bought them a villa far enough away from the city that the noise didn’t carry, but they could always watch. Edelgard let her good hand fall on Byleth’s lap. “Did I wake you?” she asked.

“I had a nightmare. I was back in Enbarr and I…you…”

She looked down at her hands, then buried her face in them. Edelgard’s stomach churned at the thought. “It was only a nightmare. We’re both here now, not in Enbarr.”

Byleth nodded and gently took Edelgard’s hand from her lap. Her own hands were scarred and mottled, but lifted Edelgard’s fingers so delicately to kiss them. “I only wish it hadn’t felt so real,” she said, her breath rolling over the back of Edelgard’s hand. “How is your shoulder?”

“Same as always. The healing helps, but I think it’s always going to hurt.” A great many things were always going to hurt, but she didn’t say that. There was no point in lamenting aloud and making Byleth feel powerless to help her. She leaned into Byleth’s side and looked down at the table, intending to ask for the tea, but noticed a folded piece of parchment beside the cup. “A letter?”

“A messenger came by after you went to sleep,” Byleth said, and handed it to her. She took the candle and held it up so Edelgard could read it. There was no salutation or signature, but it was hard to mistake Dorothea’s careful, looping hand.

_I hope your intermediaries are reliable enough to get this to you, and that things are better for you there than here. Ferdie has convinced Rhea and Seteth to stop turning Enbarr upside down looking for you for the time being, but I don’t imagine they’ll let the civilians rest for long before starting again. They’ll look in the Hevring lands next, or Bergliez. If you’re there, I suggest moving farther afield. Beyond Fódlan, if you can._

_It may be some time before I can write again. Ferdie is…they made him king, Professor. King of a united Fódlan, if you can believe that. Claude ceded the alliance to him before dissolving his dukedom and leaving for Almyra, and there was no one left in the kingdom to object. And we have our wedding to plan. It’s bittersweet, I think. This was everything I wanted, more than what I wanted, but the price was so high._

_Perhaps one day, not soon, we might visit if you can ever share where you’ve gone. I would like to see Edie. For closure if nothing else. I hope that she’s well, as strange as that feels to write._

The letter cut off without anything more. Edelgard rubbed the pad of her thumb over the parchment. “She deserves closure,” Edelgard said. “And they really made Ferdinand king…I suppose there weren’t many other options. I do hope she can rein him in.”

“Dorothea has a good head on her shoulders.”

Edelgard pushed into Byleth’s side until she felt a soft kiss on the crown her head. “I left a terrible mess for them to deal with, didn’t I?”

“I don’t think there’s much point in agonizing over it. They’re up to the challenge. And it’s a long way away from us.” Byleth burned the letter in the candle’s flame and let the ashes twist away, then gave Edelgard’s hand a quick pat. “Let’s go back to bed. You need your rest.”

“And you don’t?”

Byleth helped her up. She had her fair share of bandages, but no broken bones underneath. “Not as much as you do.”

“You can be quite overbearing when you want to, my teacher.” Edelgard smiled as she was led back to the bedroom.

⁂

For all of Byleth’s skill with healing magic, Edelgard’s recovery was a slow process.

Their last fight in Enbarr had been vicious. Relics clashing and cutting, and then steel when those broke in their hands. Blow traded for blow. The southern wall of the throne room collapsing when a demonic beast fell into it, cutting them off from the rest of the palace and their allies.

Both of them had looked like they had more blood outside their bodies than in by the time Edelgard collapsed, her life pouring out of a dozen wounds, broken and not long for the world. She had the strength to rise to her knees, leaning so much on her rapier that it cut into the carpet, and hold herself up. She refused to die with her head bowed.

But Byleth only slashed at the floor beside her and let her sword fall. Her hand reached out instead, flickering with healing energy. Some of her wounds closed, though not enough to save her if she was left alone. “Why?” Her voice was cracked and strained.

“I’m done fighting their crusade,” Byleth had said. Every breath sounded like a struggle. A cut above her eye had turned half her face into a sheet of red, with one weary green eye shining through. She turned her hand over. “Come with me.”

“Where?”

“Somewhere. Not here. Away.”

Dagda was _away_ enough, Edelgard thought. The first week had been terrible when every sip of water seemed to make her sick, but the warm weather had proven something of an aid to her recovery.

Her slow, painful recovery.

Some months had passed since their arrival. Three or four, she wasn’t entirely sure. Enough that Byleth had colored her own hair and Edelgard’s twice in darker, more muted colors. Enough that she had read and reread her book on the Dagdan language a few times. And enough to be frustrated to tears with the lack of progress in her convalescence.

A metal brace hugged tight to her left leg to keep the damage they had only recently discovered to a minimum, mangling her gait and forcing her to swing her whole leg outward to walk. Suddenly the length of their kitchen, between the doorway to the bedrooms and the balcony where Byleth was waiting for her, seemed so great. Edelgard’s fingers brushed at the brace, the cold metal pressing into her skin. “I was walking perfectly fine before,” she said, in one last attempt to get out of this.

“You weren’t, and what point was there in getting a physician up here if you’re going to ignore her advice? Please, we’re almost done for the day. This is important to make sure that your leg heals properly.”

It was too difficult to argue with Byleth. Suddenly she understood how Linhardt always felt, going along with things simply because putting up a fight wouldn’t do much. All right. Once more on her little circuit, she could do this. That she was essentially walking toward Byleth the whole time helped her motivation. One step.

Edelgard still wasn’t entirely sure what Byleth was to her. She imagined Byleth felt much the same about her, though it was difficult to tell from that inscrutable expression. They shared a bed, but only in the narrowest sense of the phrase. One step. Both of them were fairly free with their affections, kissing and embracing as they pleased, but never more than that. _You need time to heal_, was all Byleth had said on the matter when Edelgard brought it up. That was true enough, she supposed. One step—

Her braced leg swung wide and went into one leg of their table, sending a jolt of pain up her leg as the brace shook against her skin. Edelgard hissed and crumpled, stopped from falling only by Byleth catching her as she pitched forward. “Damn it all,” she said, gripping at Byleth’s tunic. The initial pain didn’t keep its sharpness, quickly softening to a dull ache behind her knee, but Edelgard still felt tears stinging at her eyes. “Damn it…you saved my life, and I repay your mercy by falling apart in front of you.”

Byleth helped her into the nearest chair and knelt in front of her. A lock of brown hair fell in front of Edelgard’s face, and it took her a moment to realize it was hers. “It’s only one setback, these things happen. I know you, El. You’re not the type to lose heart.”

She gently wiped away a few tears. Edelgard sighed and looked down at her lap. “I’m not sure why you’ve chosen to waste your time with me,” she said.

“It’s not a waste. Not if it’s you.”

Byleth pressed her hands around Edelgard’s, only to grumble when there came a knock at the door. “Go on, I won’t try to claw my way out of this brace while you see who’s at the door.”

“That was…oddly specific and unsolicited, but I’ll hold you to it.”

She took the dagger from her belt and went to the entryway. Despite her assurances, Edelgard shifted her tunic to look at her leg and the metal framing it. Her bruises from Enbarr were long gone, but so many scars remained. Her knee was pushed outward at an odd angle, and the brace was only to keep what damage had already been done from getting worse. Little raised lines stuck out all over her calf and thigh, and the rest of her body was no different. Perhaps that was why Byleth had been so…chaste. She still considered herself attractive on the whole, but it didn’t take a genius to see all the way her war had taken its toll. Not that she didn’t value Byleth’s dedication and her small affections, but she felt as if she was dashing what small hope she still had that her old school crush would be realized.

When Byleth returned, she had a single envelope that she set down on the table. “I thought it might have been the grocer’s boy, but he doesn’t come until the end of the week,” she said, and took the other chair. Edelgard hastened to fix her tunic and looked down at the envelope. Its wax had been pressed into place with a blank seal, and the only address on the outside was _Professor_ in Ferdinand’s careful, exacting hand. “Would you like to read it first?”

“What would His Majesty have to say to me? ‘Look at how much better I am, ruling a united Fódlan’? His gloating was unbearable before, I can only imagine how it will be now that he actually has something to gloat about.” Her dismissal aside, Edelgard broke the seal and unfolded the letter, laying it flat between them so they could both read it.

_I hope that wherever you’ve managed to situate yourself, it’s somewhere warm. Making a progress through the former alliance and kingdom lands late in the year has been especially unpleasant. Of course it’s necessary to help consolidate things after the unification, but I rather wish Lorenz had felt that it could wait until next summer._

_You are well, I hope? Perhaps you’ve found a teaching post somewhere, I know as well as any that you have a great talent for it. Or maybe you’ve taken to selling your sword again, in which case I weep for your enemies. Whatever it is you’ve found to do, I only hope you continue to do it quietly. The archbishop has not relented in her search for you and Edelgard._

_On that score I hope you might convey an apology to her. This is thankless work, and I never gave her enough credit for all that she did in keeping the common people insulated from hardship while keeping the gentry in line. There might have been something to her idea of abolishing the nobility. Were Dorothea not so eminently suited to matters of state, I would have proposed a similar course of action to yours, vanishing and making a life somewhere else._

_But I have prattled on for too long. Please accept my best wishes for both of you._

“It seems you’ve started a trend,” Edelgard said, wiggling her leg to try and take some pressure off her thigh. “Convincing sovereigns to leave it all behind.”

Byleth chuckled.

“I think I’d like to lie down a bit before dinner.” Edelgard rose to her feet and shuffled away from the table, looking down to keep careful watch over her braced leg. Byleth tucked the letter into her tunic and stood to follow her. “I didn’t ask for help.”

“No, you didn’t.”

And Byleth didn’t help her. She didn’t help her all the way to their bedroom, staying half a step behind Edelgard, ready to catch her if she fell. When she finally eased down on her side of the bed, Byleth relaxed, lingering at the footboard as Edelgard brushed some of her hair back behind her ears. Her hand hit the bed a bit too hard and made her shoulder ache, forcing out a wince. Byleth hurried into the washroom and returned with a bottle of liniment before sitting beside Edelgard. “May I?”

“It was only a minor shock. But if you insist.”

Byleth undid the clasp on her tunic and eased the right side down, exposing the mottled twist of skin covering Edelgard’s shoulder. She grimaced and looked away as Byleth opened the bottle. Even among her collection of wounds, that one stood out as particularly unsightly. The liniment was cold as it trickled over her skin, then warmed as Byleth gently rubbed it in, avoiding the spots that had seen the worst of the break months before.

“I must be quite a sight now, looking like this,” Edelgard said. She jostled the brace until it made noise for emphasis. Byleth paused and cocked her head as she looked at her. “All the scars. The damage.”

Silence hung between them until Byleth was finished with the liniment and fixed Edelgard’s tunic. What pain there was in her shoulder had dulled, enough that it was almost as if she hadn’t jostled it at all. She still grimaced. Of course she was a mess, calling attention to it could do nothing but shatter the polite fiction that she was still attractive, comely…desirable.

“More like a vision.” Byleth sealed the liniment and stood again, leaning over to kiss Edelgard on the top of her head. “Go ahead and lie down, I’ll wake you when dinner’s ready. The last of the fish and whatever we have lying around for a salad, how does that sound?”

Edelgard’s mouth felt too dry to speak, so she merely nodded and let Byleth guide her down on the bed. She bumped her nose to Edelgard’s once. “Call me if your shoulder gives you any more trouble.”

“All right…”

She didn’t manage to sleep. Edelgard merely stared at the ceiling, listening to Byleth’s movements around the kitchen.

⁂

“How does it feel?”

Byleth was at her side, ready to catch her if her leg gave out, but for the first time in the year since arriving in Dagda, Edelgard didn’t feel as if she was about to fall apart. Her brace laid on the table to her right, and her slow application of weight to her left leg wasn’t yielding any pain. The knee still pitched outward more than it faced forward, as the physician had warned, but her slight limp no longer made her wince and hiss. Her shoulder, too, had healed as well as could be expected. She would never swing an axe or wear armor again, but she could write, she could prepare food, and she could reach for things above her head. Edelgard had her life back, minus the fighting. Perhaps that was for the best.

“It’s a bit stiff, but it doesn’t hurt, finally,” Edelgard said. She put an even amount of weight on both legs, then grew a little more daring and tried favoring her bad leg. Byleth pursed her lips but didn’t chastise her, watching carefully as Edelgard finally lifted her good leg from the floor. “Ha! Look at that!”

“Careful…”

“Oh, I’m not going to start jumping around. It’s just—” Edelgard went to the other end of the room and came back— “I can walk again. I can reach things.”

Byleth nodded and gave her a smile before wrapping her up in a hug. “I’m proud of you.”

Edelgard relaxed into her embrace, closing her eyes as Byleth stroked her hair. She shrank a little, and Byleth released her. “Should we do something to celebrate? That was what we used to do when I was a mercenary and someone healed up enough to take the field again.”

Of course she was never going to heal _that_ much, but this was almost better than she could have hoped for when she was limping off a boat in Feradan, half-dead and wracked with pain. Edelgard looked at the scar on the back of her right hand where a sword had glanced across her skin, a remnant of their last fight. She sighed. “May I ask if I…oh, this isn’t easy.”

“El?”

Something twisted around her heart. How she would have preferred another year of recuperating rather than having this conversation, but she had to know. Edelgard thought she might go mad if she went another day without knowing where they stood. “I need your honesty, no matter how much you think it may wound me.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever been dishonest with you,” Byleth said, brow furrowing.

“No, you haven’t.” She let out a long, deep breath. “When we had been here for a few weeks, I tried to, ah, do more than kiss you. And you rebuffed me, you said that I needed time to heal. In retrospect you were right, so I didn’t raise the issue again. Now that I _am_ healed, or as healed as I’m going to get, was that all you meant by it, or…was it a polite way of trying to close the issue? Because as we are now, I cannot help wanting more.”

She sat in one of the chairs at the table, fussing with her hands in her lap while she stared down at Byleth’s feet. An unbearable silence stretched out between them. “Please, just tell me your honest feelings,” Edelgard said, her good heel tapping against the floor. “I’ll never bring it up again if you ask it of me.”

Byleth came a step closer, then knelt slowly in front of Edelgard and took her hands. She kissed the scar she had given Edelgard a year prior. “I thought you might feel pressured if we took things further, since I was still helping you with everything. As if you owed me. But I did mean what I said, you did need time to heal. So did I. To be blunt, I don’t think either of us would have enjoyed it very much while we were still injured.”

“True enough, surely.” Edelgard’s heart was beating all through her chest, so heavy and rapid she thought she might be having a paroxysm. As it was, she forced out an unsteady breath and brushed some of Byleth’s hair from her face. She would look so lovely with it cut shorter. “And now?”

“Now…”

Byleth stood and guided Edelgard to her feet. She walked backward toward their bedroom, keeping her gaze fixed on Edelgard. A heavy knot tied itself in her stomach as they crossed the threshold and fell into the sheets together. “Now, I think, I have an idea of how I might like to commemorate your hard-won recovery…”

“I’m eager to hear your ideas, my teacher,” Edelgard said, and let herself be pulled down.

For all of her energy, Byleth was slow and methodical in undoing Edelgard’s tunic, though Edelgard could feel the way Byleth’s hands shook as she freed each loop from its catch. She brushed the fabric aside and exposed Edelgard’s collarbone. “Perhaps I’ll start here,” Byleth said, dipping into the crook of her shoulder. One hand slid up Edelgard’s leg, fastened on her hip, and squeezed. “Or here.”

Byleth trailed her lips down to Edelgard’s chest, to the upper end of one of her oldest scars. She froze. The skin there was still raised and fibrous, hardly the best way for them to start things. “You needn’t focus on those, I know how unsightly they are,” Edelgard said, trying to nudge Byleth to one side. Instead she looked up at her.

“I don’t want you piecemeal, Edelgard. I want all of you, all the scars and broken pieces and rough edges as much as anything else.” Byleth closed one hand over hers and threaded their fingers together. Edelgard felt a tear prick at her eye. “I just want _you_. So please don’t try to hide yourself away.”

The night was warm and humid by the time they fell against one another, spent—_every_ night in Dagda was warm and humid, really. Edelgard lazily watched a bead of sweat roll down Byleth’s neck and slip over the swell of her collarbone, wondering if it was worth her while to take her hand from Byleth’s thigh to wipe it away. She settled for giving the slackened muscle there another greedy squeeze. Byleth’s answer was to kiss a line from Edelgard’s temple to her throat and hold her a little tighter. “Would you say that I’ve recovered sufficiently?” Edelgard asked, watching the moon come up over the horizon through the window.

“Oh, yes. I might even go farther than that and say splendidly.”

“Praise isn’t necessary, really.” Edelgard turned enough to reach up and kiss Byleth squarely on the mouth, drawing her tongue over Byleth’s lips before letting her go. “But thank you.”


	3. Chapter 3

“Mom says lunch will be ready soon.”

“Hmm? Oh, thank you.” Edelgard gave Sura an absent pat on the head and got slowly to her feet, paying one last look to the port of Feradan north of their home. The sudden application of weight on her bad leg made it threaten to give out, and she had to lean to the other side as she bent down and soothed the muscle there. Her knee’s odd angle made it bump into her hand, and she turned toward her son. “Help me in, hmm?”

Sura put his arm out so Edelgard could lean on him, and she dropped more weight onto his side than she intended. “Mama?”

“I’m all right, I’m all right. A little sore today. I think it’s going to rain.”

The dropping air pressure and the slow roll of iron-gray clouds coming in from the east told her that more than any clicks or pops in her knee, but Sura was still young enough to believe that she had some power of augury. He helped her into a seat at the dining room table and returned to the kitchen where Byleth was working on something delicious. It was her day to cook, and she would have chased Edelgard out of the kitchen even if she felt confident enough to attempt helping with whatever her wife was making. Something from the morning’s catch at the fishing village upriver of Feradan, to judge by the savory smell. “All right, mind the heat,” Byleth said, and handing the spoon over to Sura. “Nice and gentle. Don’t stir it too quickly, or it’ll start to fall apart. Just keep it moving, can you do that?”

He nodded vigorously and set to stirring, freeing Byleth to go to the counter and put a clove of garlic on the cutting board. Edelgard watched her pick up a knife and start chopping. It wasn’t a sword, but seeing her handle just about anything with an edge had the power to enrapture her. Byleth slowed her pace and glanced up at her, looking between locks of loose green hair—they had long since stopped with the dye, ten years seemed long enough for people to forget—and grinned. She slid the edge of the knife slowly into the garlic, exhaling as the blade cut through and almost making a show of it now that she had an audience. It would be a shame not to watch when she was making such an effort, Edelgard thought, and rolled her tongue between her teeth. Byleth moved through the rest of the clove with ease, then sliced an onion for good measure. The knife moved in a whirl to gather everything together for dicing, and Byleth rocked through an exaggerated yawn—that she cut short when the knife nicked her finger.

“_Fuck_,” she hissed under her breath, still swearing like a mercenary, then caught herself with a look over her shoulder at their son. Sura remained focused on the pot on the stove. “I mean, uh, ouch.”

Byleth stuck the bloodied finger in her mouth as she sectioned off the affected bits of onion and garlic. Edelgard stood up to go and help, a bit too quickly, and listed to the right, toward the table. She steadied herself on it, and the sound of a knock at the door was very faint over the jab of discomfort that shot up and settled in her right shoulder. Byleth had her finger held beneath a healing glow, complaining about how slow magical healing was when doing it to oneself, leaving Edelgard the only one available. “I’ll see who it is,” she said to an inattentive audience before going for the door. They weren’t expecting any deliveries, and if any of the resettled refugees from Fódlan had troubles to tell her about they would typically find her on a day when she was in Feradan. An assassin was right out—none of Rhea’s hired blades had ever found them, and attackers rarely knocked anyway—leaving her quite curious about who was outside. “Hello—?”

The past decade hadn’t done a thing to her. Dorothea was as lovely as ever, her hair falling in gentle waves over bare shoulders almost to her waist. Beside her, Ferdinand showed a bit more of the last ten years, with a tinge of gray in his hair among the flashes of orange tied loosely and a wrinkle here and there. Both of them were dressed simply, put together well enough but not in the way Edelgard would have expected a king and his queen to appear. Even so, they could have walked out of a storybook and no one would have been any the wiser. Edelgard tried to say something, but the words turned to ash in her throat. Was this real? And if it was, what could she possibly say? Her mind raced, and it was a small miracle that she didn’t stagger from the surprise.

Finally, when the shocked silence started to become uncomfortable, Ferdinand cleared his throat and offered her a small, earnest smile. “Edelgard.”

She wished that she was still coloring her hair, it was too noticeable to people who knew her rather than refugees. “Ferdinand,” Edelgard said, fighting a dry throat. “Dorothea.”

Her expression was harder to puzzle out, neutrality carefully crafted after so long at the highest levels of society. Concealing contempt or anger or both, if she had to guess. “Edie. It’s…is it really you?”

Dorothea took a cautious step forward, coming right up to the threshold but not crossing it, and Edelgard flushed in embarrassment. There was a shift in Dorothea’s shoulder, and Edelgard braced for a punch in the face—before being wrapped in a slow, careful hug. She let out a little sound of surprise without pulling away, and even tried a testing pat on Dorothea’s arm.

“El? Who is it?” Byleth called from the other room. Dorothea eased back at the sound of her voice, and Ferdinand stood a little straighter.

“I don’t think you’d believe me if I told you…”

Byleth was wrapping a bandage around her finger as she walked into the entryway, then stumbled into a cabinet thanks to her distraction. Each pair stared at the other for a long, drawn-out moment, before Edelgard inched back toward Byleth. “You’re right, I wouldn’t have believed it,” she said, and hastily tied off her bandage. “Please, come in.”

They were a bit trepidatious in crossing the threshold, then crashed over it simultaneously to embrace Byleth. Edelgard watched her wife disappear between the two of them, reducing down to nothing more than a pair of arms grasping to try and properly return their embrace. “Guess you found us,” came her muffled voice from somewhere under Ferdinand’s collar.

She managed to work herself free and retreated to Edelgard’s side, brushing at the backs of her fingers as they all composed themselves. “That does beg the question of _how_ you did it,” Edelgard said with the beginnings of a frown.

“Just a matter of asking the right people the right questions,” Ferdinand said. “Don’t worry, no one else knows. I made sure never to write it down.”

“How could no one else know? Your guards couldn’t possibly have let the king and queen of Fódlan go traipsing off to another country without any idea of where—”

“I’m not the king anymore.”

Edelgard stopped in her tracks. He showed her the third finger of his right hand, where a lighter band of skin near the base marked the absence of a signet ring. Byleth cleared her throat. “It sounds like there’s a lot to talk about. We were just about to sit down with our son for lunch, will you join us?”

Byleth nudged Edelgard with one arm to offer it, and Edelgard took it for support as they led their guests into the dining room. Sura was still dutifully stirring the pot with his backs to them, and Dorothea made a small _aww_ing sound at seeing him. “Mom, I think it’s done—oh.”

“We have guests, as you can see,” Byleth said as Sura hastened to wipe his hands clean on his trousers. “This is Dorothea and Ferdinand, they’ll be joining us for lunch. And this is our son, Sura.”

He hurried over, his face coloring a little, and offered a bow. “It’s very nice to meet you, Mr. and Mrs…er…”

“Aegir,” Edelgard said. “Yes?”

“Oh, there’s no need for all that.” Dorothea gave him a little pat on the head, and his blush deepened. “Aunt Dorothea and Uncle Ferdie will do fine.”

“Why don’t you help Mama with setting two more places while I finish the food,” Byleth said, going toward the cookpot as it began to bubble over.

Sura did most of the actual work of getting two more chairs and moving things around appropriately, while Edelgard could only hand him extra plates and silverware from the cabinets before carefully sitting at the table herself. She sank into the seat next to Dorothea, much to Sura’s apparent chagrin, but he made no complaint and took his place on the other side of the table as Byleth brought over a platter of the day’s catch.

“Should we get into all of the details now, or wait until after we’ve eaten?” Byleth asked as she sat at the head of the table, immediately to Edelgard’s right.

Ferdinand pushed back a few locks of hair that had missed his braid. “If it’s all the same to you, we should probably eat first. The food on the ship didn’t exactly agree with our stomachs. A home-cooked meal would do wonders for both of us, I think.”

They truly seemed to need it, Edelgard thought. What was a perfectly tasty, if fairly average meal by her own account had their guests focused intently, good manners clashing with the need for food that wouldn’t go overboard shortly after. Edelgard shot Byleth an inquisitive look with a quick tip of her head toward them, but her wife seemed no less nonplussed by their presence as her.

When Ferdinand and Dorothea had cleared the platter with effusive thanks, Byleth invited them onto the veranda overlooking Feradan for drinks while Edelgard pressed a few silver pieces into Sura’s palm and sent him into the city for sweets, over his faint protests. Byleth busied herself with pouring some wine, then went out at Edelgard’s side.

“Thank you,” Ferdinand said, and took a sip. Edelgard felt a flush of misplaced embarrassment. It was hardly a vintage fit for a king—but then, that was apparently no longer the case. He set his glass down, took Dorothea’s hand, and looked out over the port. “I suppose I should start by explaining why I’m not the king anymore.”

“Overthrown?” Edelgard asked.

“What? No, I abdicated. It took until almost last year for everyone to recover, and the work was too draining to keep on with it. I would have been dead in a few years from the burden. My successor was doing well enough when we left from Nuvelle. There should be a legislative body set up in another ten years.”

_Recover_. He didn’t have to say what Fódlan had been recovering from. The war. Her war. Edelgard sank in her seat and busied herself with her wine. “I don’t know how you did it for so long without so much as a crack,” Ferdinand said.

“The stress would have turned my hair white.”

They laughed, mirthlessly at first, and then genuinely. With that burning question answered, they were free to move to lighter topics. All the obligations of rulership hadn’t left them with any time to have children but now they had all the time in the world to change that, as Dorothea was quick to remind her husband, and the climate here in Dagda was a bit humid but otherwise very agreeable, and were any of the other villas nearby up for sale, since it seemed like such a nice area? Byleth answered most of their questions, and offered to introduce them to the elderly couple down the way who were looking to move into a smaller home closer to the city. Dorothea agreed to go with her, but Ferdinand demurred, pleading exhaustion. It would have been terribly rude to leave a guest unattended, obligating Edelgard to stay behind with him as they nursed what was left of their wine.

“Go ahead, you can say it,” Edelgard said.

“What am I supposed to be saying?”

“That you managed to do everything I wanted and didn’t even have to start a war in the process.”

Ferdinand set his glass down with a look of confusion, then nodded once as he turned to her. “To tell you the truth, I haven’t thought about our rivalry for some time. Well, the rivalry that existed in my head. All I could do was focus on improving things as best I could and dealing with raiders from Sreng.”

“Not Almyra?”

“They’ve been rather more placid ever since Claude was crowned. He asked after you…I hope you don’t mind that I told him we found your body in Enbarr.”

“Probably for the best.” Edelgard downed the rest of her wine, then stood carefully. “Well. Brag or don’t, but it’s good that things are peaceful in Fódlan. Maybe if I’m lucky I’ll be forgotten in a generation or three.”

“Edelgard, wait. Please.”

She held the back of her chair for support. What a day for her pain to flare up. Ferdinand thoughtfully tapped his first finger to his chin as he figured out what he wanted to say. “I wouldn’t have been able to institute half the reforms I managed if the old governments were still in place. The war was just as instrumental as anything else in paving the way for the future. People won’t see it that way…I’m having a little trouble picturing it that way myself, to be honest…but it’s true. Tearing down the old order was the only thing that gave the new system space to grow.”

“Every story needs a good villain,” Edelgard said bitterly.

“Is that how you see yourself? The villain? Because the Fódlan diaspora down in Feradan seems very appreciative of a short woman with white hair who lives around here.”

Edelgard shook her head. “They like Felicie, not Edelgard. My sister’s name is the only thing keeping them from tearing me limb from limb. They’d as soon throw me into the sea if they knew who was really pleading their cases to the city. I’m the reason that there _are_ refugees in the first place.”

“I don’t think you give yourself enough credit. But as you like.” Ferdinand got to his feet, then frowned. “You’re hurt.”

“Just a bad day for the pain. Byleth and I did a number on each other in Enbarr.”

“Would you humor an old rival’s offer to help?” he asked, and held out a hand. Edelgard sighed.

“As you wish. But only because I know you’ll break out in hives if you miss a chance to be noble and gallant, not because I need it.”

She let Ferdinand help her to her feet and escort her back to the lounge.

⁂

It was almost uncanny how well Ferdinand and Dorothea slotted into the space in their home. Of course they had offered their spare room and eventually wheedled their guests into accepting, which set Byleth to hastily making it up with fresh sheets while Edelgard entertained. That, at least, was easy. Sura wanted little more than to hear all the stories Ferdinand had about their days at the academy and the last ten years—predictably embellished, but still within acceptable bounds of reality—leaving Edelgard to sit with Dorothea and sip at a cup of bergamot.

“He’s adorable,” Dorothea said over the rim of her teacup, watching her husband give a rather embroidered account of their battle at Zanado. Edelgard nodded absently. “Is he, er…”

“There were a great many war orphans in Feradan. I’m not sure if he remembers when we found him.”

“Ah. I wasn’t sure if it was an adoption or if Byleth’s weird goddess powers could—” Dorothea made a waving gesture with her free hand, as if she herself wasn’t quite sure what she was suggesting— “well, anyway. Would it be strange? If we were so taken with that other villa that we just had to move there?”

Edelgard shrugged with her good shoulder. Dorothea still looked so lovely, the same teasing songstress who had no trouble working most of their class into a fervor, including herself some days. Her hand fell to her now-misshapen knee. “You always did have trouble putting your own wants and needs first. It isn’t a bad quality for a queen, but you don’t have a whole populace to keep happy now. A point of familiarity like you two would be more than welcome, I promise. And I know Byleth feels the same way. If you both like the place, then make an offer.”

As if summoned by her name, Byleth padded up behind Edelgard with her near-silent gait and pressed a kiss to the crown of her wife’s head. “I think they might, you should have seen the way Dorothea’s face lit up when she saw the view.”

“Professor…”

She blushed a pale, fetching pink, and Edelgard busied herself with her tea.

When the night wound down and everyone had retired for the evening, Edelgard crawled into bed with her bottle of liniment, but held it in her hands as she stared down at her arms and legs. It had been a soldier’s body once, when her scars had solid planes of muscle to stretch across so that they would at least add to her dignity, if not her beauty. Not anymore. Byleth was finishing up in the washroom when Edelgard finally took the top off and doled out a few drops to rub into her worst spots.

“Well, none of that was expected, but still nice,” Byleth said as she walked in, flicking some stray water from her shoulder. “Can I help with that?”

“Please.”

Byleth took the liniment and sat beside Edelgard to work it into the skin around her shoulder and knee. It chilled at first, then gradually warmed her skin and soothed the constant low ache to a more manageable discomfort. Edelgard closed her eyes. “They seemed to be doing well,” she said. Byleth nodded absently with a sound of acknowledgment. “Dorothea’s still very pretty, isn’t she?”

“Hmm?”

She moved on to the other problem areas, around her ribs and elbows. Edelgard’s face burned in the darkness. “Dorothea. She plays off the image of the beautiful queen rather well, doesn’t she?”

“I suppose?”

“And Ferdinand managed to do everything I couldn’t. In ten years, even, and then set it all aside. Maybe it was better that it turned out this way—”

“Is there something you want to talk about, El?”

She opened her eyes. Byleth’s muted concern was written all over her face as she withdrew her hands and set the liniment aside. Edelgard looked down into her lap as she worried her tongue between her teeth. How could she say this without sounding petty? She couldn’t, she decided, it was a petty thing to begin with and no eloquence was going to hide that. “I suppose seeing them after all this time left me feeling somewhat…insecure.”

Byleth took her hand. “Don’t mistake me, it’s certainly nice to see them again and I’m glad that Fódlan has prospered from their leadership. I know it isn’t equivalent. The chaos after the war left a vacuum to enact changes I never could have seen through during it. But he isn’t even gloating about it, trying to compare himself to me.”

“And that’s…bad?”

“I didn’t say it made sense.” Edelgard pinched the bridge of her nose and let Byleth tug her closer, until her cheek was resting against Byleth’s shoulder. It seemed easier to talk about this if she didn’t have to look her wife in the eye. “I wish that was the worst of it, but then I see Dorothea, and, and—”

Edelgard held out her arms for emphasis, turning them to let the scars catch the lamplight. “She’s still gorgeous, and meanwhile I’m more scar tissue than skin. I didn’t think I was vain. I still don’t. But then I saw her, still looking like that after all this time. Hardly a fair comparison, I know. Still, there it is. You married a very petty, insecure woman. Who, by most any measure, isn’t all that attractive.”

“Oh, El,” Byleth said softly. She took both of Edelgard’s hands and pressed them in between hers, then kissed the backs of her fingers. “Sure, Dorothea is pretty. But if you believe that her being here has thrown you into some unflattering light for me, let me tell you just how wrong you are. How lovely you are. How attractive, scars and damage and all.”

“I know it’s silly. Certainly I don’t _want_ to feel this way, but it makes my stomach turn all the same.”

“How can I help?”

Byleth let one hand fall to Edelgard’s lap and squeeze gently at her thigh. Edelgard sighed. “Because I do want you to feel…wanted.”

She leaned over, burying a deep kiss in the crook of Edelgard’s shoulder. “I want you to feel good.” Byleth drew back and trailed her lips over one of the scars that slashed over her collarbone. Edelgard was very aware of her own breathing, suddenly. Half-lidded, half-divine eyes gazed up at her. “I want you.”

“With all the damage and the scars?” Edelgard asked. She knew the answer, but surely she could be forgiven for wanting to hear it just now.

Byleth laid her down on the bed and straightened up to strip away her nightclothes before resting between Edelgard’s legs. “All the damage,” she said, and kissed her way from Edelgard’s ankle to her misshapen knee. Her hands raced ahead of her lips, tracing the raised lines that crisscrossed Edelgard’s skin. She was already sensitive from the liniment, and her wife’s attentions were only adding to the swirl of warmth in her chest. Byleth kept moving up, kiss after kiss after kiss, lavishing attention everywhere she went. “All the scars. All of you.”

“Mrs. Eisner, if I didn’t know any better, I would say that you’re trying to seduce me,” Edelgard said, watching more and more of Byleth’s face disappear between her legs. Eventually the first hints of warm breath rolled against her, and Edelgard shivered and rolled her hips. She could feel the first hints of arousal creeping in and closing around her, like a coil pressing in from all sides.

“Mmm, perhaps I am.” Byleth brushed her lips along the middle of Edelgard’s sex, then let her tongue flit out. Edelgard whimpered and obligingly raised her hips when Byleth went to put a pillow beneath them. She meandered, her tongue wandering to and fro while Edelgard gripped at the sheets, rolling and canting her hips to get another kiss here, another swipe of the tongue there. Stars danced when she shut her eyes to focus on the sensation. Byleth’s name rolled past her lips like a prayer, invoking, beseeching, and Byleth herself moaned in response as she hiked up onto her knees to touch herself. There came a long, slow draw over her clit, an insistent and commanding tug at the coil pulling her muscles taut, then another. Another. Another. Her heart raced, so fast it seemed to burn her from the inside out. All the while Byleth refused to let up, and Edelgard could only wonder whether her mind or her body would give out first.

It was her body. The furious surge of arousal easily overmatched her ability to contain it, and Edelgard twisted and thrusted her hips as she planted another pillow over her mouth to keep from waking the house. Byleth slowed but didn’t quite stop, dutifully attending to the end of her orgasm as well as the beginning, one hand gripped securely on Edelgard’s thigh. “_Byleth_,” she managed to moan out, reaching blindly for her wife and finally hitting upon some of her hair.

“Now,” Byleth said, rearing up on her knees to tower over Edelgard, “have we put an end to this talk of how you aren’t attractive, or must I change tack and come at the problem from another flank?”

Edelgard luxuriated atop the sheets, quite enjoying the imposing presence Byleth had affected, and shrugged as best she could in her prone position. “I fear you may have to,” she said, trying to fight the traces of a grin.


End file.
